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hmartiro / project-thesis

xJüs, the hexapodal robot with a passive-backbone to improve behavior over harsh terrain.
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Develop Battery Level Monitoring System #68

Closed PayneTrain closed 11 years ago

PayneTrain commented 11 years ago

Design a simple system that will interface with Battery/BB so that user can tell battery level/usage

hmartiro commented 11 years ago

This is definitely a good idea for the battery. I'm still leaning towards the MeCap BeagleJuice over the BEC for powering the BB. It mounts under the BB and has an on/off switch as well as LED bars to show charge level. I think it's worth pursuing the BEC but if we get the additional funding we should definitely get the Juice.

PayneTrain commented 11 years ago

For now will use this monitor which will plug into the 6S cell port on the battery and will audibly alert if the voltage of a cell goes below a set value (this should be around 80% of the 4.2V full charge value) At this time a hot swap will be performed to add a new battery.

While this is a cheap and simple monitoring solution, it would be cool to use an A2D converter and communicate with a simple computer script over USB to convey a voltage value to the user (could be integrated with the python gui perhaps). I'll look into this and try to implement it if time permits